Navigate:

March 13, 2008

Categories:

Debate on a controversial electronic surveillance measure hasn’t even begun on the House floor, yet tempers have already begin to flare on Thursday morning, with Republicans slamming the bill and the way in which it will be debated.

The House is expected to take up an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act sometime Thursday afternoon or evening. House Democrats are hoping to pass a bill before the two-week Easter recess to kick-start stalled negotiations with the Senate on the issue.

President Bush wasted little time weighing in on the House, issuing a statement Thursday morning blasting the measure and promising a veto if it were to pass the Senate.

“Members of the House should not be deceived into thinking that voting for this unacceptable legislation would somehow move the process along,” he said.

The bill would not grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that aided the government in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and would include a court approval process for FISA warrants—two measure that have led Republicans to call the bill “dead on arrival.”

The Senate passed its own FISA update last month, which included immunity. Bush has repeatedly called on House Democratic leaders to vote on the Senate bill—a move Democrats have refused.

Congressional Democrats were quick to respond to the president’s message.

“Once again, the President continues to try to bully the Congress and mislead the American people on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in a statement put out just minutes after the president’s.

“He refuses to accept that under our system of government, neither the President nor the telecommunications companies gets to decide which laws to follow and which to ignore.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the president's comments "demonstrate an almost complete misreading of this important bill" and that the House bill provides all of the tools the intelligence community needs to protect the country.

House Republicans were also outraged Thursday morning over the structure of the debate for the bill.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee was allotted only 20 minutes for debate, while the House Judiciary Committee received the bulk of the time.

“First they said there was no urgency to strengthen terrorist surveillance, now apparently there is no time for the intelligence committee to debate it on the floor,” said Hoekstra.

Remember when Republicans insisted Dems should "have the courage of their convictions" on Iraq and vote to cut off funding?
When can we expect the GOP to have the same "courage" and just nationalize the telecoms?
If the intelligence is that important (and they're actually planning to read it this time), but the telecoms won't give it up without immunity, then man up and seize those telecoms, boys!

hm, here's the deal with the Constitution, specifically the 4th Amendment; it states "unreasonable searches and seizures", meaning some can be done without warrants (like the TSA does at the airport), and some do (needed when the FBI or the police wiretap a suspected U.S. criminal, all based on probable cause). As far as I'm concerned, the 4th Amendment was not violated by the Bush administration or the telecoms, and immunity is the correct way to go.

SteveIL says "As far as I'm concerned ... immunity is the correct way to go." You folks do realize that the current law explicitly *gives* them complete, total immunity as long as they follow it, right? And you do know that the House bill makes it crystal clear how they show they were, right? So what you're saying is you just don't care if laws means anything or not. Sorry, but seems like a bad plan to me..